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<title>In His Father’s Footsteps by Queen of the Potato People (Atelicu)</title>
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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/28251186">In His Father’s Footsteps</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atelicu/pseuds/Queen%20of%20the%20Potato%20People'>Queen of the Potato People (Atelicu)</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Red Dwarf (UK TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Depression, M/M, Possible Alternate Universe, Psychological Trauma, Self-Loathing, Suicide, Unrequited... Something, memories of underage dub-con, memories of underage non-con, toxic personality</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-12-23</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-10 18:55:48</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Mature</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con, Underage</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,438</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/28251186</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/Atelicu/pseuds/Queen%20of%20the%20Potato%20People</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>After the rest of the Red Dwarf crew has passed, Arnold Rimmer does not have the fortitude to go it alone.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Dave Lister/Arnold Rimmer</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>19</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>In His Father’s Footsteps</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>Rimmer drums his fingertips on a soot-scorched console in the abandoned Drive Room and wonders, as he stares at the computer display without reading the program prepared upon it, just exactly how often Holly amused himself by reviving various holograms for companionship during the three million years before Lister emerged from stasis.  </p><p>He’d probably gone through most of the crew—turning someone on and letting the poor git wander around getting in trouble until Holly got absolutely smegging sick of whoever it was and cycled through to the next one on the roster.  </p><p>Maybe he’d saved Rimmer for last—‘saving the best for last,’ his ego whispers in his ear—or maybe Holly had just figured Rimmer wasn’t worth reviving unless he could get a laugh out of watching him and Lister drive one another spare.  </p><p>It occurs to Rimmer that he’s sitting bolt upright with the soles of both feet squarely planted on the floor and no part of his back touching the chair, his posture so perfect he might be back in school waiting for the cut of his father’s cane across his narrow shoulders if he lets his spine slump one single millimeter out of true.  There isn’t really any point in it now.  His father’s three million years dead.  They all are—except for Lister.  </p><p>Lister’s only three years dead: a massive heart attack in between one swig of lager and the next.  He was the last; the Cat died of old age long years past, and they’d honored the terms of his will as well as they could, putting a diamante tiara on his head, declaring him King of the Universe, and burying him on an abandoned moon with all 2,000 of his favorite suits, his favorite hair-care products and six foil-wrapped packages of trout a la crème carefully arranged at his feet.  Kryten was next; he perished saving everyone from one of their infinite multitude of ludicrous mishaps, and then Holly’s self-aware intellect was lost forever to a GELF ship’s computer virus.  That was yonks ago now.  </p><p>At least, that’s how Rimmer remembers it all.  There have been so many time slips, alternate realities, and ludicrous violations of what he was raised to think of as the immutable laws of physics that he can’t be sure.  But all that sort of thing suddenly stopped happening when Lister had gone, as if he were a drama magnet which had drawn all possible eventful things, both good and bad, to himself.</p><p>Now there’s just Rimmer left in this reality, undisputedly in command as Second Technician and Acting Captain of the Jupiter Mining Corporation ship Red Dwarf, which gives him the authority to do what he's preparing to do.  In theory, he could last as long as the ship’s drive keeps functioning (and given that it’s held out for 3,000,000 years already, that seems likely to be a considerable time).  But there’s no ziggurat left to climb, lickety-split.  There’s not even anyone to play Risk with.  At first he’d held out hope that some cosmic anomaly would crop up and deliver him from the endless solitude, but it simply isn’t happening.</p><p>Rimmer’s fingers drum again on the console, irritable and anxious, before he hits the enter key without letting himself think too hard about the function he’s just activated and launches to his feet to resume his interrupted pacing.  He’s paced a lot of corridors over the past three years.  You don’t need sleep or rest when you’re a hologram, so that blessed respite has eluded him.  Typical.  He’s owed a vacation, a well-earned respite from the horror that is being Arnold Judas Rimmer.</p><p>Rimmer grimaces as the lift doors open to admit him, and lunges inside as if there’s a polymorph on his heels.  The ship’s still tickety-boo, kept in good repair by the service droids, but the skutters are nowhere to be seen.  He hasn’t laid eyes on so much as a one of them since Lister’s funeral ceremony concluded and they all hummed away at top speed.  They’d be company of a sort, if they weren’t avoiding him—and he’s so lonely by this point that he’s even considered reviving Lister’s damned talking toaster.  That will be a moot point soon enough.  </p><p>Arnold Rimmer is not good company for Arnold Rimmer, that much is certain.  There may only be one of him now, but the premise remains true.  The voices inside his head are merciless, and they loathe him.</p><p>
  <i>Everybody loathed you.</i>
</p><p>“No, they didn’t,” he says, ignoring the darker implications of talking to himself.  Smartest person in the room, and all that.  He straightens himself still further, bouncing on the balls of his feet to show how keen and well-adjusted he is.</p><p>
  <i>Yes, they did.  And why are you so keen on looking keen?  It’s all just a show, you know.  Who do you think you’re putting it on for?</i>
</p><p>An excellent question.</p><p>“Shut up,” he says, curt.  The door swishes open, revealing a swirl of dust on a dark floor.  It’s marked with Arnold’s own footprints, which have proliferated throughout the ship now that there’s no Kryten to keep the place tidy.  Rimmer steps out of the lift and leaves a fresh layer on top of the older ones, courtesy of his hard light drive, possibly the best thing that ever happened to him in his entire 784 subjective years of existence.   Except, possibly, for his one brief interlude with Yvonne MacGruder.</p><p>The vending machines are dark as he passes; they don’t acknowledge him.  It’s not like he’d eat the same terrible rubbish Lister loved to order from them—he wouldn’t even if he could.  But even if he were as alive as a bacterial culture swab taken from Lister’s sock hamper, he figures they wouldn’t pay him any mind, order or no.  </p><p>
  <i>And a good thing, too.  You’ve gotten slovenly, disgustingly fat in your old age.</i>
</p><p>Arnold doesn’t answer.  His mind orbits itself in tight spinning circles, ready to pounce on weak spots and savage them, the one constant of his life—if you don’t count the merciless, relentless sabotage from a multiverse dead-set against him.  His current appearance is all Holly’s fault.  The stupid goit got annoyed with him for insulting Lister’s physical fitness and packed on the extra pounds to fatten him up, adding them to his recovery disks, too, in a cruel act of holographic vengeance.  His inner voice knows that very damned well.  </p><p>
  <i>Pathetic.</i>
</p><p>“Sod off.”</p><p>
  <i>And now you’ve gone mad.</i>
</p><p>“It takes one to know one.”  The voice is right, and he knows it.  “Besides, it never mattered if I was a few kilograms over trim.  I’m a hologram, for God’s sake.  I can’t get out of breath because I don’t have any to start with, and if I needed to squeeze through a crack, I was only as big as my light bee.”</p><p>
  <i>Mad as King George III the day they chopped down the King of Prussia.</i>
</p><p>“Oh yes?  And who is it, may I ask, who’s talking to himself?”  It doesn’t matter that he’s attacking himself; it only matters that he maintain the best possible defense by going on the offensive—and that he keeps moving away from the Drive Room, as fast as he can manage, before his courage fails him.</p><p>
  <i>That won’t take long.</i>
</p><p>“Oh, won’t it?  I daresay I’ll last long enough.  This ought to help.”  He steps out of the lift onto the executive floor, strides toward the atrium, then climbs onto a banister and sliiiiiiides down it as it descends into the hold, levels flashing past far faster than a service lift could carry him…. Cat used to do this all the time, and Rimmer had mocked him for it, but it's rather fun, now that he's got to the point of trying it himself.  “Whee!”  He whirls through sweeping curves as the stair parallels the broad ventilation shaft, waving his free arm like a cowboy atop a bucking bronc, the wind of his passing whipping tears from his eyes.</p><p>
  <i>If only father could see you now.</i>
</p><p>“He’d be rather proud, I think.  At least in that one reality where he decided to top himself.”  Rimmer’s feet smack into the deck at the bottom of the shaft and he staggers a dozen meters, coming to a halt only when he careens painfully against the wall.  He shakes his head to clear it.  The top of the stair has vanished in the gloom two hundred floors above.  That should do it.  He straightens his uniform and wipes his face, restoring his tidy appearance with care.</p><p>
  <i>Coward.</i>
</p><p>“I think not.”  Rimmer feels giddy from the speed and the height, his program mimicking the rush of adrenaline he’d experience from the ride, were he still human.  Or possibly it’s merely terror, now that he can’t possibly make it back to the Drive Room in time.</p><p>He’s arrived on the deck where the enlisted crew quarters lie.  He and Lister lived here together before the radiation accident and briefly afterward, before they decided to move up to the executive level in order to better enjoy the conveniences to be found there. </p><p>The corridors are thick with dust, and a dull orange light pulses silently at every junction as Rimmer strides toward his old room.  Some of his things are still there—his bronze and silver swimming certificates, his neatly-stored underpants, still on hangers and wrapped in plastic….  He can’t be all that bad if he’s managed to keep his things spick and span for so long, now can he?  Lister, though—Lister couldn’t keep a T-shirt clean for thirty seconds.  That is, assuming he’d stolen himself a new one from one of the crew’s lockers; all his own T-shirts were so badly soiled that once worn, they could never be laundered back into a pristine state again.</p><p>There it is: his bunk on the bottom, Lister’s on top.  At the time of their departure, Arnold had instructed the skutters to make his bunk and always keep it shipshape with hospital corners and freshly fluffed pillows, but apparently they had ignored him—and apparently Lister had come back here on occasion to take refuge, leaving madras stains that have ensured the bedding resembles an abbatoir more closely than a bunk.  The room smells like a combination of outhouse and brewery, both located next to the largest food refuse dump in Mumbai.</p><p>Rimmer huffs annoyance and sits at the table, where Lennon and McCartney swim fitfully in their cloudy water, around and around.  Giddiness is starting to give way to panic.</p><p>
  <i>It figures you’d come here.</i>
</p><p>“Don’t start.”</p><p><i>Of course I won’t start.</i>  The voice sounds smug, and he stiffens at the warning.  <i>Just as you never had the courage to start anything, did you?</i></p><p>“Black card,” Rimmer grits his teeth, starting to guess where this is going—the ultimate forbidden topic, the last taboo.</p><p>
  <i>But it was there, wasn’t it?  Ever since Frank and Howard let you know what you really were.  Ever since you begged Porky Roebuck to let you be his friend; you’d make it worth his while.</i>
</p><p>“Those were just boarding school high-jinks.  Boyish antics!”  Rimmer sputters, gesturing with agitation.  “The lads had to establish a pecking order, do a little harmless hazing; it was all perfectly normal.”</p><p>
  <i>We both know it wasn’t.</i>
</p><p>“Look!  When you pen a bunch of lads up in a school and don’t let them have access to girls—”</p><p><i>They had access to all they needed.</i>  The voice is insufferable, cruel and harsh and so smegging self-righteous he itches to slap it.  <i>You were just like mum, weren’t you?  You’d spread them for any Tom, Dick, and Harry who walked down the street.</i></p><p>“And you’d know all about it, wouldn’t you?”  Rimmer flares, springing to his feet and slamming both palms down on the table.  “It’s not like you weren’t along for the ride, giving helpful suggestions about how best to curry favor!”</p><p><i>It’s a good thing Lister never guessed.  Can you even imagine what he would have said?</i>  The inner voice turned pompous, delighted with its own cruelty.  </p><p>“Lister was a blithering idiot and a feckless layabout, but he wasn’t a bigot!”  Rimmer grinds his teeth so hard it’s a wonder they don’t crack.  </p><p>
  <i>“Ah, yes, but then, he didn’t think he had to wonder if you were always eyeing up his arse, wishing you could give him a <b>real</b> dressing-down!</i>
</p><p>“Shut up, you horrible… prig!”  Rimmer’s talent for invective failed him.  </p><p><i>You awful, pathetic, sniveling little nancy-boy!  You sat by his coffin for days and wept like a little child.  I was humiliated! </i>  </p><p>Rimmer doesn’t know if this voice most represents his id, his ego, or his super-ego, and frankly he doesn’t care.  "I had something in my eye!"</p><p><i>You had an eyeful of pathetic, loathsome sentiment and self-pity!</i>  The orange light turns red, and it’s pulsing faster now.  Arnold feels some consolation that when it stops, so will the voice.  </p><p>“You toffee-nosed, hypocritical smegging git.  You pompous, self-satisfied cyst on a rectal wart’s syphilitic epidermis.”  Rimmer savors the words; in that moment, he hates himself more than he ever has before, just as he loves the sharpness of the words on his tongue and the certain knowledge of how much they hurt as they hit home.  “You’re after me because he’d never have given you a second look, and you know it.  No, I did the right thing.  The noble thing.  I never let on.”  He edges toward the door.  “It was the right thing—just like what I'm doing now.”  </p><p>Saying it aloud makes it real, as if it weren't before.  Oh, God.  Oh my smegging God.  The right thing?  More like the most idiotic thing he’s ever done!  He's never even had someone go down on him-- what the hell was he thinking?  If he gets lucky and the lift is near this floor, maybe he can still manage to stop the countdown.  Rimmer flings himself out the door, moving faster than he ever has in his life.</p><p><i>You're such a self-deceiving gimboid,</i> the voice sneers, vicious to the end.  <i>Look at you running like a frightened rabbit.  You can’t even do one last thing right!</i></p><p>No, he can’t.  Rimmer sprints for the lift; he can fight with himself later.  He stabs frantically at the emergency call on the lift’s control panel; behind him the walls throb with red warning lights.  A panel in the periphery of his vision pulses, the numbers that flash there steadily decreasing toward zero.  God send he can fight with himself la—</p>
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